Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We enjoyed a wonderful meal with our family today. It was a lot of fun to be together and eat a great meal. The girls love going to Gr. Grandma and Gr. Grandpa's...because they get spoiled!
This morning we talked about what we are thankful for and we are all thankful this year for a healthy and wonderful family, we are thankful that daddy has a job and we have a roof over our heads and food for us to eat. We also are thankful for the possesions we are fortunate to have! We also thanked God for being in our hearts and for all that He has done in our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

School

Today was conference day at school. Nothing surprised us with the exception of Abbey not really wanting to draw at shool. At home, she likes to draw on her own terms. She doesn't like to color in books but will draw pictures and write on post-it notes. Ashley on the other hand loves to color. She could color from morning to night if we let her. That is usually her first toy of choice. I wonder if she likes it so much because she had so many issues hearing other kids? It was just something that she could do all by herself and no one bothered her. She likes it now if we color with her.
Speaking of Ashley-she ruptured her ear canal on Friday night. We had gotten home late and she was getting ready for bed and kept telling Shannon that her ear was hard. Shannon told her to finish what she was doing and we would check it out. She put a finger in her ear and out came a bunch of blood. We called the ER doctor and since she had no fever and was acting normal, we could just bring her in on Sat. She had an ear infection and we didn't know it. That is not the first time we have missed that. She never complains about it so either she has a super high pain tolerance or she is bothered so much in her ears that it doesn't even faze her. Anyways, she is on medicine and is doing better.
I had insomnia again last night. I was up until 4 am. It really sucks!
No school this week for us!

Zoo

We went to the zoo yesterday with our dear friends Jen and MaKena. It was a lot of fun to see them and be with them since they moved. We braved the cold but stayed mostly inside. We rode the monorail to see all of the other animals that were to far to walk to.
It was a fun time and we were so happy to spend it with our friends. We miss them a lot!!!!

Speech

Abbey starts speech classes today. She isn't as excited about it as she was a few weeks ago. Hopefully that will change after she meets the kids in the class today. It will be wierd to bring Abbey and leave with Ashley. It is only an hour and that should be okay.

Week of 11/15/2008

First of all I just need to say how nice is has been having no election ads, no election flyers posted on our doors, no annoying phone calls telling me how bad the other politician is...No matter who you voted for, I hope that you support Barack Obama not because he is a democrate but because he is our President and leader of our country. There are times when the person I had voted for didn't win but I did the right thing and supported the person who is our leader. We may not always agree with them but we can support them. Now if we can only tackle the amount of money spent on campaining: it had gotten way out of hand.

I have been reading a book called "Screamfree Parenting". Please note that I don't scream at my kids, I just had heard about this book from an article I saw and decided to check it out. In the article it didn't tell me that it was Christian based so I was very surprise (happily)to see the author talk about how Jesus is our parent and what he would do. The whole premis of the book is that parents spend too much time making their children the center of the universe when the author believes we need to focus on ourselves! We need to continue to grow up and calm down. Don't give in to anxiety or our emotional reactivity could make the situation worse. I have only just begun the book and look forward to finishing it soon.

The girls continue to be sweet as can be. I know that I am a bit biased but I cannot help it. Abbey has this uncanny knack for saying things that just bring me to tears. She will talk about my parents and I just cry. She has a very sensititve heart and I appreciate that from her. The other day I had the news on and she saw the coverage of the 35W Bridge and asked me what happened. She was genuinely concerned. I can't just give her simple answers: she wants more.
Ashley is thriving maturity wise as well as in her confidence. Yesterday was another great expierence outside of her "safe" zone of friends and she did great. She was a little scared at first playing at a playland, but soon she was doing it all by herself and coming up to me for "5's". The hearing aid has helped in so much.

The atmosphere at Shannon's job is very bad. People's moral is at an all time low. They have already said that there probably won't be any merit increases, profit sharing will be adjusted and they are talking manditory shut downs around the holiday and of course they are talking layoffs again. They just layed off 600 people a few months ago. It is never ending. We just are thankful that he has his job, we have a house over our heads and food. In today's economy it is so tough to have any of those things.

I have been teaching some more and I really do love it. I may possibly be teaching next week for two days but won't know until Monday. I am so happy to be in the classrooms with the kids. I just adore it.

Haiti and The Schlorf Family

Our friends, the Schlorf's, are in Haiti doing missionary work. Please pray with them and the people in Haiti as they recover from yet another catastrophe. Here is the link to their website: http://schlorfjourney.blogspot.com/
I, as a mother, cannot fathom ever losing a child. I could not imagine what it is like to have so much chaos surround me and not be able to find my missing child. I also cannot imagine what it is like for Ken to have witnessed so much death and destruction. I don't know why this has happened, I leave that up to God. I hope that for whatever reason that the Schlorf's are in Haiti at this time, they continue to turn to God to lift them up.
Please keep them all in your prayers.

Halloween 2008

Here are our two hero's! Abbey as Wonder Woman and Ashley as Super Girl.